


For Everything There Is a Season

by SouthSideStory



Series: Gathering Stones [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Miscarriage, Naruto for Nepal, Romance, background Uzumaki Naruto/Hyuuga Hinata - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3867250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waiting: it’s a practice Sakura is too familiar with. One she would happily let go, if only life would stop giving her loves to wait for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I want to say thank you to the people who donated to UNICEF Nepal to make this fanfic happen. We reached our $500 goal because ashtronomica, okwtfxia, Torikai, AkatsukiV, dislike, xxlovendreamsxx, ashsch87, uchihasass, jentruth, akako-chan, and my husband were generous enough to donate toward the narutofornepal project. Thanks, guys, for giving me a great reason to bring this story to life!
> 
> For those who are unfamiliar with the project this fanfiction is a part of, the amazing uchihasass began Naruto for Nepal to bring together Naruto fans to raise money and awareness for Nepal in wake of the earthquakes that have devastated her home country. This is an absolutely incredible effort, one I am happy to be a small part of.
> 
> Because I received a couple of questions about this, I want to clarify that since we have reached the donation goal, I will be updating this story like any other from now on. There’s no need to donate further to read the future chapters. (Although, of course, I encourage anyone to donate to UNICEF Nepal Earthquake Relief Fund who wants to, simply because it’s a good cause and there are many children still in need).

.

.

Waiting: it’s a practice Sakura is too familiar with. One she would happily let go, if only life would stop giving her loves to wait for. First Sasuke, her ever-wandering husband, and now this little one. So close, a baby-to-be riding under her heart, but it will be months before she can hold him in her arms.

When Sasuke is home, she falls asleep with his strong body pressed against her back, an arm wrapped around her waist, hand cupping the gentle swell where their child grows. And when he is not, Sakura lies on her side, awake, palm on her belly, waiting for the intermittent kicks of their little boy’s feet against her womb. She can feel it, inside and out, and her son’s strength eases her fears a bit.

Caution or paranoia or premature mother’s intuition: she doesn’t know what it is, but from the moment she found out she was carrying the next Uchiha, Sakura has been afraid. So every morning and every evening she uses her chakra to check her baby’s heartbeat, a reassuring rhythm that promises hope and new beginnings.

Except that tonight, as she lies alone, one woman in a bed made for two, and searches for the signature cadence of her son’s life, Sakura finds nothing.

.

.

The medics have no answers for her. They say her son seemed to be thriving at the last checkup, and Sakura herself is healthy in every way except that she houses a dead child. Most likely, the baby was sick from the moment of conception, only there was no way to tell until his heart stopped. All it takes is the smallest imperfection in the blood, she knows this already, but cold facts do not help her understand why this has happened.

Nothing could have been done, they tell her. She is not to blame, and there is no reason she couldn’t carry a baby to term in the future. Such assurances should make her feel better, Sakura thinks, but they don’t.

How is it that just a week ago she and Sasuke were up late together, his hand splayed across the swell of her stomach, feeling for their son’s movements? Now she’s by herself, left behind once again, her husband carrying out a mission in Earth Country, while the baby they never named sits still and lifeless inside her. She is utterly alone. An expectant mother who no longer has anything to expect.

“Sakura?” Akiko asks, voice gentle. “How do you want to proceed?”

She sits on the exam table, gripping its edges. Sakura hadn’t been listening, but she knows what Akiko must have said, because she has asked the same question of patients before.

“I want to induce,” Sakura says, because she can’t bear the thought of a natural delivery. Waiting for days for her body to realize what she already knows, and all the while carrying a child who has no hope of drawing breath.

“I’ll schedule you for this afternoon,” Akiko says.

Okaasan and Ino arrive within the hour, the Hokage a few minutes after them, and Sakura has never been more thankful for family and friends. She allows her mother and Ino to comfort her, but when it comes time for the induction she asks that only Naruto remain in the room.

He sits in the chair next to her bed and promises, “You’re going to be all right, Sakura-chan.”

It should be her husband here right now, holding her hand while she pushes and cries and pushes again, bringing forth a baby in this grim mockery of birth. But she long ago learned how to live without Sasuke, and it is not so difficult to press through pain in his absence. Naruto remains by her side, his warmth and comfort as constant as the promise of sunrise in the morning.

When it’s over, Akiko asks if she would like to hold the baby.

“No.” Maybe it makes her cold or cowardly, but Sakura doesn’t think she has the strength to cradle her would-have-been-child.

.

.


	2. Chapter 2

.

.

Sasuke had been adamant that he didn’t want to name their child after any of the family he’d lost, so when it comes time to choose what her son would have been called, Sakura picks Ryudo. A name with no history, no legacies of tragedy attached.

The funeral is a small affair. Just herself, Otousan and Okaasan, Kakashi, Sai, Ino, and the rest of the rookies—except for Sasuke, of course, who still hasn’t returned from his mission.

When it’s over, and her son’s ashes have been interred beneath a polished stone, Naruto walks Sakura back to her empty, three-bedroom house. “Are you sure you want to be by yourself?” he asks. “You could stay with me and Hinata if you want.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says. “Thank you, though, for being with me through all this. I won’t forget.”

He shrugs, as if true friendship is a small thing. And perhaps to Naruto, for whom loyalty and love come so easily, it is.

The next few days go by slowly. She takes the pills Akiko gave her to ease the pain and bathes all the time, because the bleeding makes her feel dirty. Sakura avoids the room across the hall, a white-walled almost-nursery, still waiting to be painted. _We’ll take care of it when Sasuke comes home_ , she tells herself. _Then we can clean it out together_.

But one week passes, then two, then three, and still, her husband does not return. Sakura tells herself he’ll be home soon, makes up reasons for what could be taking so long, until there comes a morning when she finds she doesn’t quite care anymore. There is no excuse for such a delay, short of injury—and she’s certain that, under the circumstances, Naruto would never have sent Sasuke on a mission dangerous enough to truly challenge him.

It’s in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day after her son’s death that Sakura finally enters the nursery. Cans of paint remain right where she and Sasuke left them, in the corner by the window. The wooden crib sits against the wall, new and polished, but painfully empty. Worst of all are shopping bags of the clothes she bought the Saturday before she realized the baby’s heart had stopped. Sakura doesn’t have to look inside them to remember the items she purchased, because she’d chosen each one with such care. Three onesies, identical in every way but color, in blue, yellow, and green. Miniature t-shirts and pants. Shoes small enough to fit an infant’s tiny feet.

She throws away the paint, the clothes, two little blankets, and an old mobile she found thrift shopping. Then she disassembles the crib. Some hopeful part of her would like to keep it, just in case she ever has need of a baby’s bed, but then Sakura remembers her absentee husband, and she decides not to bother. It goes in the trash with all the rest.

.

.

Protocol demands that shinobi report to the Hokage first thing upon returning from a mission, but Sasuke has been away for over a month, and he has missed his wife too much to go anywhere besides home. Naruto can wait.

He knows something is wrong as soon as he walks through the front door. It’s dark, the curtains shut and lights turned off. The house is too quiet and it smells like dust. This is not how Sakura keeps things in his absence. She opens windows to let in fresh air and sunlight. Plays music, usually the cheery, upbeat sort of thing he finds irritating and trite.

Sasuke hurries from room to room, calling her name. Sakura doesn’t answer, but he finds her quickly enough, buried beneath the covers in their bedroom. He takes off his shoes, lies beside her, and kisses the back of her neck. But she pulls away from him, curls in on herself.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I lost the baby.”

There is no moment of misunderstanding. No doubt to shield him from the repercussions of what she has just said.

_Our son is dead._

“Sakura…” He puts a hand on her shoulder, and this time she doesn’t shy away from his touch. But neither does she lean into it the way she always has.

“When?” he asks, and it hurts to voice the question.  

“Four weeks ago,” she says.

Their son died while he was chasing an elusive target across every inch of the Earth Country. A mission which had seemed too important to pass up or abandon, but now Sasuke wishes he’d never taken it.

Sakura turns over to face him, and he sees something in her eyes that has never been there before, something that looks startlingly like hate, but it’s gone almost as soon as he notices it. Now she’s crying, and so is he, because their child is gone. Another Uchiha that Sasuke can add to his list of lost loved ones.

“What did you name him?”

“Ryudo,” Sakura says, and she sounds impossibly tired for a woman of twenty-six. “I hope you like it.”

Sasuke nods, wipes his cheeks. “It’s a good name.”

.

.

It surprises Sakura, how easily her body recovers from the miscarriage. Now that she has no baby to make milk for, the swollenness of her breasts goes down, and after she starts training again, the thickness of her waist slims almost back to the shape she had before pregnancy. If not for the stretch marks streaking her belly, it would be impossible to tell she had carried and lost and buried a son. She considers erasing the pink and silver lines from her stomach—a simple enough vanity that Konoha’s new mothers often request—but something keeps her from doing it. Maybe it’s the desire to have tangible evidence, imprinted on her person, that her little boy even existed.

Sakura stands in front of her full-length mirror after a shower, naked and damp, pink hair sticking wetly to the back of her neck. She cups the slight curve of her belly, all that’s left of the fullness pregnancy had brought to her figure.

The door opens and she jumps, covers her breasts and middle with her arms. Sasuke stands, staring at her, his mismatched eyes taking in her nakedness until she turns to face him and says, sharper than she should, “Get out.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. Sasuke leaves, closing the door behind him with a sharp, decisive _click_.

Once he’s gone, Sakura sits on the edge of the bed, head in her hands, and reminds herself of all the reasons she loves her husband. A list which was once endless, but it’s growing shorter and shorter of late.

The next day, Sakura goes to Naruto and asks for a mission. Some task that will take her far away from her too-empty house and too-quiet husband.

Naruto frowns at her, blue eyes full of concern. “I know you didn’t ask for my opinion—”

“And yet I have the strangest feeling I’m going to hear it anyway.”

Her friend says, “You must be hurting, but Sasuke needs you as much as you need him, and you shouldn’t run away from all this—”

“I’m not running away,” she lies. “I just want things to go back to normal. Back to the way they were before.”

Naruto looks at her evenly. “Before you weren’t asking for the longest, most far-reaching missions I’ve got.”

“No, Sasuke was,” Sakura says, “and you seemed happy to oblige him.”

He blushes. “Sasuke’s one of the best shinobi in this village—”

“And I’m not?” she asks.

“Of course you are.”

“Then just give me a damn mission, Naruto.” She slams her fist down on his desk, and a picture of Hinata and Kushina falls over.

Naruto rights the framed photo and sighs. “If you’re sure you’re ready.”

“I am,” she says. “I promise.”

.

.

“What do you mean you don’t know when you’ll be back?” Sasuke asks.

“Just what I said.” Sakura packs a small bag with clothes, weapons, and gear. “This mission is going to require me to stay undercover for a few weeks at least. Could be longer.”

He has no right to ask her to stay, he knows that, but all the same, Sasuke finds himself saying, “And you think this is a good time to go? It’s only been—”

“You’re going to lecture me about leaving? Are you sure you want to do that, Sasuke?” Sakura glares at him, fierce and accusing.

A different sort of man would back down, but he has been tip-toeing around his wife for two months. Speaking without talking and touching without feeling, and Sasuke is sick of it. “So you want to punish me for not being here when you lost the baby?”

Sakura zips her bag closed, walks around the bed, and pushes him in the chest. Not hard enough to hurt, but he has to take a step backward to keep his balance. “I don’t care about punishing you,” she says. “I barely care about anything anymore. I just can’t stand to be here, in this village, in this house. I want to be _gone_. Surely you, of all people, understand that.”

He does, too well, but if his years of running have taught him one thing, it’s that there’s nowhere you can hide from the demons you carry with you.

“Fine,” he says. “When do you leave?”

“Dawn.” Sakura sets her packed bag by the door, then strips down to her underwear. He tries not to watch her undress, even though this is his _wife_ and their bodies are as familiar to one another as their own. She pulls on an old, worn out t-shirt of his and climbs into bed, back facing him, same as she has every night since he returned to Konoha.

Sasuke has been too afraid to put his hands on her, but tomorrow she’ll be gone and he has no way to know when he’ll see her again. He presses himself against her, wraps his arm around her waist, so slender again, and he tries not to think how round her belly would be right now if—

“I love you,” he tells her, because it’s true and neither of them has said this to the other since the baby died.

“I love you too, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura answers, but she sounds more weary than sincere.  

He doesn’t sleep that night, too afraid of the nightmares that might come to slip into slumber. So Sasuke is awake when Sakura gets up, showers, dresses, and grabs her packed bag. She leaves without saying goodbye.

.

.

He sits in front of the stone bearing the name Uchiha Ryudo. Sasuke visits every Sunday, first thing in the morning. Sometimes he brings a hot drink, because dawn in December is chilly, even as far south as Konoha. He takes a sip of tea, removes last week’s wilted flowers, and replaces them with fresh white roses; he’s quickly becoming the florist’s best customer.

_I don’t know why I’m doing this._ There’s no point to these visits. Sasuke has been coming for weeks, and not once has he summoned the courage to speak to his dead child. Besides, he could buy every flower in the village—every flower in this whole damned _world_ —and at the end of the day his son will still be dead. Nothing is going to change that.

He stands, thermos of lukewarm tea in hand, and goes home.

Without Sakura, the days pass uneventfully, even when he fills them with events. Training with Naruto, losing at shogi against Shikamaru, dinner with Team 8. Sasuke never has been one to socialize much, but he’ll do anything to take up the hours until Sakura comes back.

Today makes the fourth week of her absence, and he doesn’t care what she said, he’s certain at least part of this separation is about punishment. Even so, he can’t hold it against her. _I’m getting just what I deserve._

After he finishes sparring with Lee, Sasuke goes home and showers. He stands under the spray of hot water, hands braced against the slick tile wall, breathing in steam. For a moment, he allows himself to imagine that Sakura will open the glass door and step inside with him. Surprising him with the beauty and warmth of her presence, as she so often does.

Later, he lies down on the couch with a blanket, back to the windows, and tries to sleep. The bed would be more comfortable, but he doesn’t want to face its emptiness, all that feather-soft space where his wife usually lies.

Someone knocks. Sasuke ignores it. They knock again, then once more, and this dogged persistence is giving him a good idea of who’s bothering him.

Sasuke gets up and walks to the front door. He opens it and says, “Go away.”

Naruto frowns. “I just thought you might need some company.”

“Why?” Sasuke asks. “What made you think I’d want you here right now?”

He tries to close the door, but Naruto doesn’t let him. Instead, he bullies his way inside. “I’m worried about you, Sasuke. You’ve been distant ever since you got home, and it’s been twice as bad with Sakura gone.”

“And whose fault is that?” Sasuke asks. He goes to the kitchen, hoping for a little space, but Naruto comes along.

His friend leans against the wall, hands in his pockets. “You’re mad at me for giving Sakura a mission?”

Sasuke pours a glass of water. “What the hell were you thinking? She’d just lost our baby, and you send her away?”

Naruto holds up his hands. “Sakura asked me to. She was pretty adamant that she wanted to get back to work. What was I supposed to do?”

“Are you the Hokage or not? You could have just told her no.” Sasuke holds the cup in his hand, and it takes a great effort not to throw it at the wall, to watch the glass shatter into a dozen razor-edged shards. Instead, he takes a drink, savors the coldness of the water.

Naruto crosses his arms over his chest. “I am Hokage, and it’s _my_ job to decide who takes missions. Not yours.”

“This has been a fun visit,” Sasuke says, “but I think it’s time for you to go.” He walks to the front door and opens it.

“Oh, come on, I haven’t been here five minutes,” Naruto says, but he follows just the same.   

“It’s late,” Sasuke says, and he can hear the coolness of his own voice. “Why don’t you get home to your wife and daughter?”

Naruto leaves, and no sooner than he’s gone, Sasuke wishes he hadn’t kicked out his friend. Now it’s just him in this house with the empty nursery and the empty bed.

Sasuke has plenty of practice at being left behind, left alone, but that doesn’t make this any easier.

.

.

Sakura returns to Konoha on a Sunday in the middle of January. After she reports to Naruto—yes, she completed the mission and gathered the necessary intel; yes, the targets are dead—she goes to visit to Ryudo. In all her weeks away, she missed the cold comfort of the stone bearing her son’s name. Something she could touch to remind herself that he was real, and not just a sweet dream she woke from too soon.

But when Sakura arrives, someone is there already: her husband, sitting on the ground, frowning at the characters that make up Ryudo’s name, as if there is a difficult puzzle within them that he can’t solve.

Despite her light tread, Sasuke looks up as she approaches, his senses as keen as ever. “Sakura,” he says, and in her name she hears the longing of a man who loves her.

He stands, closes the space between them, and hugs her. Sakura buries her face in his shirt, wraps her arms around his back. She thought of him every day she was gone, cursed herself as seven kinds of an idiot for ever taking a mission so far away.

_How do you do it, Sasuke?_ she wonders. _How do you leave, again and again, like it’s nothing? Like I’m nothing?_

And yet, as much as she missed him, Sakura felt a certain freedom in her time away from Konoha. As if, so far from her village and her dead child and her often-absent husband, she wasn’t yoked to her sorrows.

Sakura pulls away from Sasuke and says, “Let’s go home.” There are things she needs to say, and she doesn’t think this is the place for it.

She’s silent through dinner and dishwashing, but when they go to their room, Sakura takes a seat on the edge of the bed and says, “You weren’t here.”

He sits next to her, and he’s smart enough to leave space between them. “I know,” he says. “And I’m sorry for it, Sakura. I don’t know how many times I need to say it before you believe me.”

“I believe you,” Sakura says, “but it doesn’t change things. You took the longest mission you could get your hands on, like you always do, and while you were busy doing who-knows-what, our son died. I had to give birth to our boy without you. Had to plan his funeral and name him and watch his ashes buried, alone. All because you can’t stand to stay in Konoha for more than a month before you’re itching to run away again.”

He wants to argue that this isn’t true, she can see it in his face, but he can’t, because there’s no lie in anything she has just said.

Sakura goes to the closet and pulls out the largest suitcase she owns. Funnily enough, it was a wedding gift from Ino.

Sasuke stands and asks, “What are you doing?”

She bites back tears, because she won’t cry right now, she won’t. “I’m leaving,” Sakura says, and she’s relieved that her voice sounds steady and firm rather than broken, like she feels.

“But you—you just got back…” Sasuke’s words falter and fade away.

“I know, but I can’t stay here. I just _can’t_.” She sets the suitcase aside, walks to him, and cups his cheek in her hand. Sakura looks up into the beautiful face of the man she has married and made a child with. She’s certain she’ll love him until she’s old and grey, until the day she dies.

But sometimes love simply isn’t enough.

.

.


	3. Chapter 3

.

.

Ino knocks on Sakura’s hotel room door. She knows it’s Ino because no one else can put that much sass into such a simple gesture. Sakura lets her in, and her friend gives her a warm hug.

“I’m sorry,” Ino says. “I heard last night.”

“Word sure gets around this village fast,” Sakura says, feeling more weary of it than irritated. “I only left the house two days ago.”

“Why are you at some lonely hotel?” Ino asks, and she rubs her hands up and down Sakura’s arms, giving comfort through touch. “You could stay with me.”

“No, I’m not going to intrude on you and Shikamaru,” Sakura says.

Ino takes a seat in the chair by the window. “It would not be an intrusion, but you should stay where you’re most comfortable, and if you want some privacy, I get that.”

Sakura sits on the edge of the bed and fidgets with the comforter. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, leaving.”

“Do you want a divorce?” Ino asks gently.

“No!” Sakura says. She grips the blanket tight in her fists. “I want to make things work. I just need some space, you know?”

Ino sighs, plays with the end of her long ponytail thoughtfully. “I know I have no idea what you’re going through, so feel free to tell me to shut up whenever you want, but it seems to me that if you want to work things out, you can’t do that if you’re in this hotel room and your husband is at home.”

“Maybe not,” Sakura says, “but I’m just still so mad about it all. That I lost the baby. That I had to go through it without him.”

“I’d be angry too,” Ino says. She stands, walks over to the bed, and sits beside Sakura. “I’ve known you a long time, Forehead, and you’re a forgiving person. For what it’s worth, I think you can get through this.”

Sakura leans against Ino and smiles for the first time in days. “Thanks, Pig.”

.

.

Sasuke enters the Hokage’s office without knocking. “Is she staying with you?” he asks.

Naruto looks up from his paperwork, frowning. “No,” he says. “I heard Sakura was at a hotel.”

“Do you know which one?” Sasuke asks, before he can stop himself. It’s not that he’s going to chase her down and hound her to come home. He just wants to know where she is, that she’s safe and sound.

Naruto shakes his head. “Sorry, no.” He sighs, stretches out his arm toward the chair in front of his desk, and says, “Why don’t you sit down?”

He’s too impossibly tired to argue. Sasuke has barely slept in the three days since Sakura left, pulling a suitcase behind her. She’d packed enough clothes for two weeks, maybe more, and he doesn’t know whether she even means to come back home. He hopes so, but Sasuke has never been very good at hoping. It requires a little too much optimism for his taste.

“Are you okay?” Naruto asks. “You look like hell.”

“Thank you,” Sasuke says dryly. He rests his elbows on his knees and laces his fingers together. “And no, I’m not okay. I think my marriage is falling apart, and I don’t have any idea how to fix things.”

“I’m sorry,” Naruto says, and he’s looking at Sasuke with a sort of sadness that he might mistake for pity if he didn’t know his best friend better. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so,” Sasuke says. “Not unless you can turn back time and save our baby.”

_Or keep me from wandering off when Sakura needed me most._

Naruto gives him a small smile, shrugs, and says, “Afraid I can’t help you there. But I could take the afternoon off so we can spar.”

“No,” he says, “I’m not much in the mood for fighting.” The clock on the wall reads ten minutes after one, and Sasuke finds himself asking a question he never thought he’d voice: “Want to get some ramen for lunch?”

Naruto grins. “You know the answer to that already.”

They go to Ichiraku, and Sasuke tries not to think about how a seat should be filled between them. His wife in the middle of her two troublesome teammates, teasing him and Naruto while she eats that flavorless ramen she favors.

“I miss her,” Sasuke says, too quiet for anyone besides his friend to hear. “I’ve missed her for weeks. Now she’s finally home, and I want to see her, but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Maybe she just needs some time alone, yanno? Give her some space for now, and I bet she’ll come around,” Naruto says. “Sakura loves you. She’ll go back home, wait and see.”

He wants to believe Naruto, but belief requires more hope than Sasuke can quite manage.

.

.

Two weeks after she packed her bag and left home, Sakura goes to Tsukino’s with one purpose in mind: to get so drunk that she doesn’t remember the husband she abandoned or the baby she lost. So she sits at the bar, orders shochu on the rocks, and tries not to think about the fact that this is Sasuke’s preferred drink (although he takes his neat). One glass, two glasses, three, four. She downs them in quick succession, as professional in her haste as an alcoholic. Slowly, the world around Sakura calms, and the pain she’s been carrying with her for the last few months fades. Still present, but diminished, like an old ache you’ve grown used to.

Then someone sits beside her and says, “You look beautiful tonight.”

Taro is even more handsome now than he was when they were carrying on their affair. Turning thirty agrees with him, apparently.

He puts a hand on her thigh, under the bar, and the warmth of his touch is startling. Unwanted, but through this liquored haze, it takes her a fraction longer to push his hand away than it would have if she was sober.

“I’m not drunk enough to cheat on my husband, Taro,” she says, and she puts as much venom into her refusal as she possibly can.

He only laughs, because everything is a joke to him. Nothing serious, nothing sacred, so it doesn’t surprise her that he’s trying to fuck a married woman. “Half the village knows you left your sorry husband and you’re camping out in some fancy hotel. Which I’d like to see, by the way.”

She considers punching Taro through the wall of Tsukino’s for insulting Sasuke, but she doesn’t want to waste the money on paying for damages. So instead, she counts out the ryo she owes the bartender—plus a generous tip—stands, and leaves, stumbling with every other step. How did she get so drunk so fast? But she hears Taro follow, and no sooner than they’re outside, he pushes her against the brick wall. His breath smells like rice wine, and under the crescent moon’s light, his dark eyes could almost be Sasuke’s (and how she misses her husband, misses him like the breath has been stolen from her lungs). Taro grips her arms a little too hard, but Sakura doesn’t mind the pain. It almost feels good, to hurt in some simple way.

“Leave me alone,” she says, but he doesn’t go anywhere.

“Fuck, Sakura, you’re a mess,” Taro says. “What happened to you?”

_Uchiha Sasuke happened_ , she thinks. He’s been turning her life upside down in one way or another for as long as she’s known him.

Sakura closes her eyes, just for a moment, so that the world will stop spinning, and when she feels warm breath against her neck, she almost mistakes it for her husband’s. But it isn’t Sasuke, and when Taro kisses her throat, Sakura pushes him away.

“You’re not the one I want,” she says, and before he can try to kiss her again, she hurries away. Sakura stumbles down the street, until she’s certain he’s not following, and sits on the stoop of the closed bakery. She rubs at the place where he pressed his mouth to her skin, feeling sick with herself, wishing for a sobering shower to wash away Taro’s touch.

Sakura cries in front of a dark and shuttered shop, her husband’s name slipping from her lips like a plea.

Somehow, memory guides her back home, and Sakura manages to get herself through the door and to the living room, expecting the couch to be unoccupied—but Sasuke is sitting up, drinking a cup of tea, and he looks at her like she’s a ghost, or a stranger who doesn’t belong in his house.

She takes another step, almost falls, and quick as that she’s in his arms, held secure against his chest. He’s so warm and smells so good, and Sakura would give anything for him to take her to bed. No talk, no confusion or resentment, just skin against skin. She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. He tastes like mint and lemon, and he belongs to her, her and no one else, same as she belongs to him.

“Sakura…” he says. “You’re drunk.”

“So what?” She kisses his jaw, his neck. “You can have me, however you want me. Please.”

She sounds pathetic, desperate, but Sakura can’t quite find it in herself to care.

“No,” Sasuke says gently, and she almost feels like crying again. He scoops her up into his arms and carries her to bed. She steals his favorite pillow, hugs it to her chest, and breathes in his scent. Sakura means to ask him to stay, just to hold her while she sleeps, but she passes out before she can form the words.

She wakes from a dreamless sleep at two o’clock in the afternoon, feeling sluggish and groggy, with only the slightest headache and nausea. Sakura drags herself out of bed and into the shower, and it isn’t until she’s standing beneath the hot spray of water that she realizes the significance of where she’s at. She’s home, under the same roof as Sasuke. Some vague memory surfaces of her throwing herself at him like an idiot last night, and she bangs a fist against the tile wall.

Sakura washes her hair, gets out of the shower, dries off, brushes her teeth, and wraps a towel around her body. When she opens the door, she finds Sasuke sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. He looks up at her and says, “Hi.”

She doesn’t return the greeting. Not out of spite, she just can’t find the voice to say hello.

Other memories from the night before are flooding back, and Sakura suddenly remembers Taro putting his hand on her thigh, holding her arms, kissing her neck. Why didn’t she push him away sooner? She knows the answer—she’d been so drunk she could barely stand, much less fend for herself against a man twice her size—but she can’t help but hate herself for it.

Sasuke makes her a solid but simple afternoon breakfast of miso and rice. Nothing too rich to turn her stomach, and after she eats, she feels much better. More awake and no longer queasy. They don’t talk throughout the meal, nor after it, and Sakura goes back to bed. She wants to sleep for a hundred years and wake up to a different life.

Sasuke follows her, sits on the edge of the bed, and says, “We need to talk.”

He’s right and she knows it. Sakura doesn’t sit up. Instead, she takes his hand and tugs him down to her level. Sasuke slips beneath the covers, facing her, and asks, “Are you home for good?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I was so drunk last night I barely knew where I was, and I didn’t really mean to come here.”

Sasuke touches her face, and the feel of his skin on hers is so welcome she wants to smile. “I wish you would stay,” he says.

He might not want that soon, so Sakura takes a moment to savor the sound of his voice, the promise that Sasuke still loves her.

.

.

Even with shadows beneath her eyes, Sakura is the most beautiful woman Sasuke has ever seen. She leans into his touch, lips parted, as if she wants to say something important but can’t quite find the breath to speak. Pale pink hair falls past her shoulders; she’s been letting it grow out, possibly on purpose, but more likely she just hasn’t bothered to cut it. She’s wearing nothing but blue cotton underwear and an old, grey shirt of his with the Uchiha crest on the back, and he has never wanted to kiss her as much as he does in this moment.

“I saw Taro last night,” she says, and her voice is so small and scared that it barely sounds like hers.

Sasuke pulls his hand away from her. He doesn’t want to hear the rest, but finds himself asking, “What happened?”

“He tried to get me to go home with him, touched me a little more familiarly than he should have,” she says. “I said no, but he followed me out of Tsukino’s and—and he kissed my neck.”

If Sakura was anywhere near as drunk at the bar as she was by the time she got home, then Taro deserves a good beating for preying on a vulnerable woman.

“That’s it?” he asks. “Nothing else happened?”

“Nothing, I swear. I pushed him off of me and came home,” Sakura says.

Sasuke breathes a sigh of relief. Pulls his wife against his him and buries his face in her soft hair. “I thought you were going to tell me you had sex with him.”

“Never,” Sakura says. “There isn’t enough shochu in the world to get me to want anyone besides you.”

“Good, because you’re mine.” Sasuke pushes Sakura onto her back and cages her in with his arms, lets the weight of him rest between her open legs.

She looks up with heavy-lidded green eyes, wraps her arms around him, and whispers, “I need you.”

He slides a hand beneath her shirt and cups one of her breasts (just a shade fuller than before her pregnancy, but he doesn’t want to think on that). Sasuke flicks his thumb across her nipple, and Sakura moans softly. So many months have gone by since he drew a sound like that from her, and it makes him hard in an instant.

This is a bad idea. Their marriage is all but broken, and Sakura seems to hate him as much as she loves him. _We shouldn’t do this_ , Sasuke thinks, even as he pulls his wife’s shirt over her head. It will only confuse them both, and it might make things worse, but he pushes those reasonable fears aside when Sakura slips off her panties. And his resolve crumbles completely as she takes his hand and brings it to her sex, guides him to put two fingers inside of her, and now he feels how warm and wet she is. How much she wants this, wants him.

It barely takes five minutes to make her come, she’s so wound up and needy. Sakura gasps, arches off the bed, and makes the most beautiful staggered sounds. Then Sasuke kisses his way down her body, to between her legs, and tastes her. It’s almost painful, how hard he is, so he only teases her with his mouth for a moment before turning her over onto her stomach and fucking her.

He has made love to his wife many times, but this is not lovemaking. No, this is just a way to exorcise grief and spend passion. Sasuke pushes into her, roughly but mindful of her pleasure, and with each thrust she cries out, gripping the bedsheets with white-knuckled ferocity. She says his name, again and again, and it has been so long that it’s hard to hold back. He feels the sweet pleasure coiling low in his belly, stiffening his body even as he pounds into her, and then he’s shaking, moaning, lost in the woman he loves.

Sasuke falls to the bed beside her, trembling and breathless. Sakura turns toward him, brushes his hair out of his eyes, and says, “I missed this.”

_This_ , he notes dully. _Not me._

They lie next to one another, saying nothing, until Sakura gets out of bed and dresses. She puts on a simple red dress and short black pants, her go-to civilian wear these days. “I’ll see you later,” she says softly.

Sasuke sits up. “Where are you going?” he asks, and it feels like his heart is in his throat.

“My hotel.” The careless way she says it makes him angry, so he stands, naked, and takes some small pleasure in the way her eyes linger on his stomach and the breadth of his shoulders.

“I knew the sex wouldn’t change much,” he admits, “but I didn’t expect you to run off quite so quick as that, Sakura.”

She doesn’t say anything, just finds the heeled shoes she wore last night and slides them on.  

“When will you be back?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says, not looking in his direction.

He laughs, runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t know or don’t care?”

She glances at him, then away. “Of course I care, Sasuke.”

“Then come home and stay,” he says. “How are we supposed to fix things if we’re apart?”

“Is that what you really want? To fix our marriage?” Sakura asks, and now she’s finally meeting his eyes, at least.

“Yes,” he says. He steps closer, cradles her face between his hands. “I want a future with you.”

“That’s all I want, too,” she says, “but I don’t know how to get there.”

“Me neither. We’ll figure it out somehow.” Sasuke kisses her forehead, her cheek, her mouth.

“Okay,” she says, lips ghosting against his own. “Okay.” She sounds as defeated as she does anything else, but he swears to himself that if Sakura gives him this chance, he’ll find a way to set things right.

.

.


	4. Chapter 4

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.

Akiko gives Sakura the shot that should keep her from conceiving. It hurts for a moment, a pain as swift and minor as a bee sting. She hasn’t kept up with her contraceptive since she lost Ryudo, but after what happened yesterday, it’s clearly past time that she started taking precautions again. Sakura blushes when she remembers the day before, how Sasuke took her with all the pent up passion of a man who hasn’t had his wife in months. It felt so good, to be touched by the husband she loves. Unwise, certainly, to have unprotected sex, but there’s little and less she can do now, except wait.

“There you go,” Akiko says. “That should last you until May.”

Sakura nods. “Thank you.”

She leaves the hospital and heads to Naruto and Hinata’s house. The Hokage is busy running the village, but his wife is home with their daughter today.

Hinata lets her inside, smiling gently. When she hears a visitor’s voice, Kushina runs into the living room and says, “Pick me up!”

“I don’t know if I can,” Sakura says, all mock seriousness. “You’re getting so big. How old are you now?”

Like most children, Kushina is proud to announce her age. She holds up three fingers.

Sakura looks to Hinata. “Can you believe it’s been three years since you delivered this little demon?”

Hinata shakes her head. “Barely,” she says.

Sakura takes a seat on the couch. Kushina happily curls up in her lap and falls asleep within a minute. Hinata brings chamomile tea from the kitchen and they drink it while they chat about work.

“How did your last assignment go?” Sakura asks. “Naruto told me he was worried about you.”

Hinata taps her teacup with fidgety fingers. “He worries too much,” she says. “Everything went fine—but it’s the last mission I’ll be taking for a while.”

Sakura frowns. “Why?”

Hinata smiles, but she looks more apologetic than happy. “I—I’m pregnant again.”

“Oh. Congratulations.” There’s a moment, just a moment, in which she feels a brief stab of jealousy. But then she pushes it away and says, “That’s great news, Hinata. I’m so happy for both of you.”

“Thank you,” she says, placing a protective hand over her still-flat belly.

“How far along are you?” Sakura asks.

“It’s early days,” Hinata says. “Just eight weeks.”

“The morning sickness must be awful,” Sakura says. “Mine was terrible at two months.”

Hinata nods. “It’s worse this time than with Kushina.”

“Are you and Naruto hoping for a son?” Sakura asks. “A baby brother for this one here.” She kisses the top of Kushina’s head. The girl sleeps on, thumb tucked safely in her mouth.

“We’ll be happy either way, of course, but I have a feeling it’s a boy,” Hinata says. She reaches over to pet her little girl’s silky hair, and the tenderness of the gesture, so motherly and full of love, almost hurts to watch.

.

.

Sakura stays quiet all through dinner, but while they’re washing dishes she asks, “Did you know Naruto and Hinata are having another baby?”

Sasuke shakes his head. “No, I didn’t.”

He isn’t sure how to react to this news. For the most part, he’s glad for his friend, but there’s a side of him that can’t help but feel envious. How is it fair that Naruto and his wife are allowed a second child when he and Sakura lost their one and only?

“Good for them,” Sasuke says, and he leaves it at that.

Sakura looks at him suspiciously, as if she knows exactly what he’s thinking—and she probably does—but she’s kind enough not to pry.

He washes a plate, rinses it, and hands the dish to Sakura, who dries it and puts it away.

“I got my contraceptive shot today,” she says briskly. “It was my first since before—since last year.”

“Then yesterday, we weren’t safe?” he asks. He hasn’t had his own shot since he and Sakura decided to try for a child. There’s something like dread settling in his stomach. Sasuke keeps washing dishes, almost mechanically. Soap, scrub, spray, over and over.

“It was only one time,” Sakura says. “So hopefully there’s nothing to worry about.”

He nods, numbly, and hands the next clean cup to his wife to dry. _We’re not ready for another baby_ , Sasuke thinks. Not when they’re still recovering from the loss of their first.

“I’ll go to the hospital and get my shot tomorrow,” he says.

Later, in bed, Sakura rolls him onto his back, straddles his hips, and looks at him with the kind of warmth he has so desperately missed. “I’m glad to be home,” she says. “That hotel was lonely.”

Sasuke plays with the bottom-most button of her pajama top. For once, she’s wearing her own clothes to bed instead of his. “I’m happy you’re back.”

They kiss softly, shyly, like two people unsure of each other and the boundaries of their relationship. Sakura tastes like the rice wine she drank at dinner, and it reminds him of the first time they had sex, after his twenty-third birthday party. He asks if she remembers that night, and Sakura laughs. “As if I could ever forget,” she says.

He wants to make love to his wife, but Sasuke is hesitant to initiate that kind of intimacy with her again. Yesterday was a mistake, in more ways than one. He doesn’t want to revert back to the kind of relationship they used to have, one based on sex. Fragile as things are right now, he could see them sliding right back into old patterns if they’re not careful.

So when Sakura slips her hands beneath his shirt, Sasuke catches her wrists and says, “We should take things slowly.”

She escapes his grasp, keeps touching him, leans down so that her mouth is only a breath away from his. “Why?” Sakura asks.

When she’s this close to him, offering herself, he can’t help but kiss her. Still, Sasuke has the presence of mind to break away after a moment and say, “Because our marriage is more than this.”

“Okay,” Sakura says, and she pulls back, but he can tell from her tone that his rejection has hurt her.

.

.

There’s a part of her that wants to be pregnant again. Sakura knows this is foolish, that her marriage is too broken to withstand the stress of a new baby while they’re grieving over Ryudo. But she misses the weight of growing life in her belly, the tenderness she and Sasuke shared as they discussed names, as they considered their son’s future. So no matter how many times she tells herself that another child would be a complication, not a blessing, Sakura can’t help but hope anyway.

She and Sasuke are barely talking, and when they do speak to one another their conversation is stilted, awkward, or cold. Sakura wants to fuck her husband, to forget their problems and find solace in the sweetness of his kiss and the warmth of his hands on her body, but Sasuke seems determined to abstain from sex until they’ve made some progress toward mending their marriage. She isn’t entirely sure why he’s doing this, but Sakura retaliates by sleeping in nothing. Cuddling up to him, naked as the day she was born, and watching him squirm. It’s mean, certainly, but she doesn’t especially care. Sasuke can refuse her all he wants, but she isn’t going to make it easy for him.

He lasts ten full days before he finally asks, “Why are you doing this, Sakura?”

It’s midnight, and she’s almost asleep, nestled close to Sasuke, completely undressed.

She smiles, smug and satisfied by the strain she hears in his voice. “I think that should be obvious.” Sakura kisses his chest, lips lingering over his heart, and says against his skin, “I miss fucking you.”

Sasuke’s breath catches and his body goes tense. For a moment, she thinks she’s won, that his resolve has broken, but then he turns on his side, away from her.

“Fine, ignore me,” Sakura says, as hurt as she is angry. “You’ve always been good at that.”

He does nothing, says nothing, but she’s too used to his silences to be surprised by this.

“Damn it, Sasuke. Don’t shut me out. Please.” She places a hesitant hand on his shoulder and waits for something, anything, but he only remains still and silent.

Sakura gets out of bed and grabs her favorite pillow.

That gets his attention. Sasuke sits up and asks, “Where are you going?”

“The guest room,” Sakura says. “That’s where I’ll be sleeping until you remember how to be a man.”

She doesn’t even make it to the door. Sasuke pushes her against the wall, hard enough to knock the breath out of her, but Sakura doesn’t care, because his mouth is on hers, hungry and furious. His hands are rough, fingers bruising the round of her hips, but the pain feels like victory. Sakura drags her nails down his back, bites his lip. They kiss like this, more a battle with their bodies than any expression of love, until Sasuke picks her up and carries her back to the bed. He drops her to the rumpled sheets ungently, climbs in, and pins her hands above her head. Sasuke has never manhandled her quite like this, with such obvious frustration. Maybe it should scare Sakura, but it doesn’t. If anything, his loss of restraint excites her.

“Is this what you want?” he asks, and she can tell from the tightness of his speech that he’s trying to keep his voice steady, to maintain some semblance of discipline. It’s a wasted effort, because Sakura knows that she’s broken through that fine self-control he takes such pride in.

She wraps her legs around his waist, and it doesn’t matter that Sasuke forgoes the foreplay he usually indulges in, because she’s as wet as she’s ever been in her life. He fucks her, one hand still trapping her wrists together, the other gripping her thigh so hard that she’ll have marks there in the morning. Sakura doesn’t care, though. Not when he’s thrusting into her like this and he’s looking at her so fiercely, dark eyes full of some kind of passion, a violent lust that thrills her. He doesn’t stop until he’s made her come twice. Only then does he let himself go.

But he isn’t done with her yet. Sasuke wakes her twice in the middle of the night, first to tease her with his hands, then to fuck her again. By the time he lets her rest, the windows are lightening with dawn’s approach, and Sakura feels sore and hard-used, but still aching with want.

.

.

Faint bruises encircle Sakura’s wrists, color her hips and thighs, and Sasuke feels sick with himself. He hadn’t meant to mark her like this.

“Sakura,” he says, and he gently shakes her awake.

“Sasuke?” She blinks at him blearily, rubs her eyes. “What time is it?”

Sunlight filters in between the blinds, golden and bright. Sasuke lies close enough to her that he can see the flecks of grey in her pale green eyes, could count the freckles dotting the bridge of her nose if he wanted to.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he says.

“Well I’m not.” Sakura stretches and says, “I loved every moment of it.”

He tries not to pay attention to the way her nipples are peaked, but it’s difficult. “I bruised you,” Sasuke says.

She shrugs. “So? That’s nothing to heal. It’ll take me all of a minute to fix.”

“That’s not the point,” he says. “I _hurt_ you.”

Sakura bites her lip, then says, “Maybe I wanted you to hurt me.”

Sasuke frowns. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Desire doesn’t have to.” She touches his chest, traces the characters of her name there: _Uchiha Sakura_.

He catches her hand, stilling her fingers. “Do you regret marrying me?” Sasuke asks.

Sakura looks away from him. She doesn’t say anything for so long that she really doesn’t need to answer at all.

“I see,” Sasuke says, and he’s relieved that his voice sounds even. No matter that he feels like his heart has stopped in his chest.

“I don’t know how to feel about us right now,” Sakura says.

“Do you still love me?” he asks. He brings her hand to his mouth, kisses her knuckles. A simple tenderness that he can’t quite keep himself from indulging in.

“Nothing could make me stop loving you,” Sakura whispers. She brushes his hair out of his face with a simple fondness that makes his breath catch.

“We can get through this,” Sasuke says. “We just need to be patient.”

“I want to stop feeling this way.” Sakura sniffs, wipes at her eyes. “I’m sick of being sad and angry all the time. I want to be happy again, but I don’t know how.”

“I know,” he says, and he pulls her into a hug, kisses the top of her head. “I know.”

“Is this how you felt?” Sakura asks. Her words are small and quiet, but he’s close enough to hear them anyway. “After you lost your family?”

“Something like that,” he says, and now he might as well be a little boy again, hurt, scared, and alone. “Their deaths were so unfair I could barely breathe for it.”

“I wish there was a reason he died,” Sakura says, and now she’s crying against his chest. “Even if it was my fault, at least then I’d know _why_ it happened.”

He holds her tighter, buries his face in her soft hair, and breathes in the clean scent of her shampoo.

“I don’t know how you stand it. Living with that much loss,” she says. “I couldn’t. I’m not strong enough.”

Sasuke shakes his head. “That’s not true. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Sakura laughs, but it doesn’t sound like she finds anything funny. She pulls away from him, brushes away her tears. “I need to get ready. I’ve got a shift at the hospital soon.”

“Right,” he says. “When will you be home?”

“Midnight, maybe a little after.” She gets out of bed, and he can’t help but admire the beauty of her, bare under the morning light. Small breasts, narrow waist, strong thighs. Blush pink hair and fair skin, just waiting to be touched.

Maybe she sees something in the way he’s watching her, because Sakura says, “I need to shower. Care to join me?”

Accepting her offer is unwise, Sasuke knows, but it’s too late to take back last night, and even if he could, he doesn’t think he would.

.

.

They fuck almost every day now, and Sasuke initiates their sex nearly as often as Sakura does. She understands what this is: a distraction from their problems, a pleasurable diversion that allows them to set aside their anger and their grief for a little while. Like a bandage over a wound, it’s something to keep the bleeding under control, but it isn’t doing a thing to heal the injury.

It reminds Sakura of the days when she let Sasuke use her. When she was so desperately deep in one-sided love that she allowed him to fuck her however and whenever he wanted without demanding anything else. Only this time he’s the one who wants more, and she’s the one who doesn’t know how to give it.

Sasuke hasn’t taken a single mission since he returned from the Earth Country and found out that she lost the baby. He’s trying to stay for her sake—for the sake of their marriage—but Sakura knows her husband, and she can see when he’s growing restless. He hates being confined to one place for too long, and it’s been months since he left Konoha.

“You should go,” Sakura says at breakfast.

“Excuse me?” he asks.

“You should talk to Naruto. Take a mission, go somewhere.” She sips her hot tea, then says, “I know you want to make up for being gone when I lost the baby, but imprisoning yourself in the village isn’t going to do that. And I can tell you’re sick of being here.”

“What makes you think that?” Sasuke asks.

“You’re always looking out the window, like you want to be somewhere else,” Sakura says, “and your nightmares are getting worse.”

He leaves two days later, his travel cloak around his shoulders, for a mission he tells her nothing about. She gets Naruto to admit that it’s S-class, very dangerous, and in the Water Country.

It’s their Sunday lunch at Ichiraku, and her friend promises, “He’ll be fine.”

“I know.” Sakura takes a bite of her soft-boiled egg, then says, “Sometimes I think there isn’t anything Sasuke can’t handle.”

“The bastard is pretty strong,” Naruto agrees.

“How’s Hinata?” Sakura asks, “And the baby?”

“Both good,” Naruto says, smiling softly.

Sakura still hasn’t had her period, but it isn’t due for another day or two. She could have taken a test, but some part of her was too afraid of the answer—whatever it might be—to do that.

It doesn’t much matter though, because in the middle of the night she wakes up cramping, and when she goes to the bathroom, she finds her underwear stained with red.

_I’m not pregnant._

There will be no baby, and Sakura isn’t sure whether she is more relieved or heartbroken.

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	5. Chapter 5

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Spring comes, the cherry trees flower, and in May Sakura reports to Akiko to get her next contraceptive shot. Her stomach stays flat, as promised, although there are times when she still hugs the marked landscape of her belly and wishes it was round with pregnancy again. 

Maybe her husband is truly the last of his clan. She’s an Uchiha in name only (and barely that, these days); Ryudo is gone, his little life over before it could even begin; and she and Sasuke keep willfully extinguishing any hope for a second child.

No matter that they fuck like the teenage lovers they were never able to be. He turns to her nearly every night, and it reminds Sakura of the days when her body was the only part of her he could allow himself to want. Things are simpler in those moments, and she finds relief in the pleasure of his hands on her skin, making her cry out, making her come. When it’s over, the silence settles in, and they sleep back to back more often than not, bitterness and hurt wedged between them like a third person.

_It’s over_ , Sakura realizes, on a warm July morning close to Sasuke’s birthday. It hurts to consider, but the truth is too pressing to ignore. She’s carried this love for fifteen years, cradled it in her heart through war and peace. But is it so surprising, really, that marriage to a man like Sasuke would end in sorrow? 

.

.

No one throws Sasuke a twenty-seventh birthday party—a blessing for which he is thankful—but Sakura takes him out for dinner at a fine restaurant, then insists on drinks at Tsukino’s. She seems subdued, calm but melancholy. She keeps looking out the window, tapping her fingers against the porcelain of her cup, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

It starts raining while they down shochu and sake, and the noise of the summer storm makes him smile. Sasuke can’t help but think of a rainy night, exactly four years ago, when he and Sakura went to bed together for the first time. She’s even wearing the same dress she wore that night, a backless black thing that makes him want to kiss the valley between her shoulder blades.

He traces the rim of his cup with a lazy finger and says, “I think I’ve loved you for as long you’ve loved me.”

Sakura looks up, green eyes wide. “What?” she asks, and it sounds like she’s choked on the word.

“You heard me,” he says. Sasuke reaches across the table and takes her hand in his. “It took me a long time to realize it, but it’s always been you. And I’m--I’m trying not to make the same mistakes over again, Sakura. I’m trying to learn. To be better.”

His wife lets him hold her hand, but he can see in the listless slump of her shoulders that what he’s saying barely matters to her anymore. _Too little_ , he thinks. _Too late._

They go home and make love. It’s slow, tender, full of feeling. Nothing like the fierce, angry fucking that has dominated their nights for months.

When it’s over, Sakura kisses  him—a barely-there brush of lips—and whispers against his mouth, “I’ll never stop loving you, Sasuke. Never.”

Something about her gentle smile unsettles him, but he’s too tired to puzzle it out.

In the morning, Sasuke wakes to a bedroom filled with golden sunlight. He turns over, reaching for Sakura, but her side of the bed is empty. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach, and his heart beats too fast in his chest. Something is wrong.

Then he sees it: the framed photograph of Team 7 that Sakura keeps on her bedside table is turned face down, and beside the toppled picture sits her hitai-ate.

.

.

She should have left a note. No, really, she should have _told_ him the truth.

But Sakura knows that Sasuke would never have tolerated it. He’d have stopped her one way or another, either with promises her heart would have been too weak to ignore or the strength of his hands.

No doubt Naruto has already sent half of Konoha’s best trackers to find her, but twelve hours into her defection, Sakura has taken every precaution she knows to keep from being found. And she’s heading somewhere she doubts they’d ever expect.

She tries not to consider her parents and friends, none of whom received the goodbyes they were entitled to. But it’s Sasuke who dominates her thoughts, the husband she abandoned. He deserves better from her—he’s suffered too much already, to be left behind by the last of his family—but she thinks it will be better this way. If she’d stayed in Konoha they would have continued to tear one another apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of themselves or their love.

_I made the right choice_ , she thinks. _I did_.

It starts to storm as she crosses the western border. Sakura stops, standing in the wilderness where the Fire Country bleeds into a smaller nation. She closes her eyes and raises her hands to the dark sky. Lets the rain soak her clothes, cool and cleansing, and when she looks up into the falling-down heaven above her, she can’t help but laugh through her tears. Because she has let go of the responsibilities of the shinobi world. Because she’s finally free of the burdening love that has weighed her down for most of her life.

.

.

Seven of Konoha’s erstwhile Rookie Nine look for Uchiha Sakura. Kakashi, Hanabi, and a handful of other shinobi join the search. The ninken pick up his wife’s scent heading southwest, but they lose her trail at a spring near Tanzaku Gai. Naruto thinks she must be heading to the Wind Country, a place where she’s always been welcome, but Sasuke knows better. As much as Sakura favors Suna and its surrounding lands, she’s too smart to lead them right to her destination.

Unless she wants to be found. Maybe she doesn’t really mean to abandon Konoha for good, to leave her friends and family. To leave _him_ —

That line of thinking is pathetic, and besides, Sasuke realizes how fruitless it is to entertain. Sakura would never do this lightly, and it isn’t in her nature to worry her loved ones over needless melodrama. If she left it’s because she means to stay gone.

Their search party has been split into four groups, each heading in a different direction. Sasuke travels north with Naruto and Kakashi. While they rest, he throws shuriken at a sapling and thinks of his wife. All the ways she said goodbye yesterday: taking him to Tsukino’s, the place where things began to change between them; the lingering looks and soft smiles; making love to him with such gentleness, as if she wanted to leave him with a sweet memory to cherish.

_I’ll never stop loving you_. _Never_.

Sasuke feels a sharp prick and looks to see that he’s gripping the shuriken so hard that blood slides down his fingers, dripping into the grass. He hurls it at the sapling; the red-tinged throwing star lands just above the others, one point sunk deeply into the young, tender wood.

Sakura must be out of the Fire Country by now. She could be anywhere, already building a new life without him. Will she sell her services as a shinobi and medic or maintain a lower profile? What color will she change her hair to? Pink is such an unusual shade that keeping it would make her too conspicuous.

He wonders how long it will take her to settle down. To find another husband, to make another child.

Sasuke squeezes his hands into fists, and the bite of pain in his right palm grounds him. Helps him breathe past the deeper hurt.

This must be something like the suffering he caused Sakura when he deserted Konoha. Except they were children then, not husband and wife, and his reasons for leaving were far less personal than hers.

He hears footsteps and turns to see Naruto and Kakashi—the men of Team 7, brought together in the absence of Sakura.

“Are you ready to go?” he asks.

Kakashi nods and Naruto says, “Yeah.” He thinks his best friend means to speak further, but Sasuke hurries ahead before the Hokage can work up the gumption.

They pass through the Valley of the End, a place with too many memories for him to stand at the moment.

_I shouldn’t have left_ , Sasuke thinks. He should have stayed in Konoha if it killed him.

.

.

Amegakure remains an industrial wasteland. Rain-slicked metal buildings stand without pride, rusting, rotting, and strung together by cables. She knows well enough that the village’s new leader, a student of Konan’s, is doing her best to restore her home, but a place like this might be too damaged for true recovery. Maybe Sakura senses a kinship with war-ruined Ame, and that’s why she felt such a need to come here.

Or perhaps it was simply the prospect of so many orphans—motherless children, ill and injured—that gave her the idea.

Sakura wears plain clothes, a simple blue traveling dress over grey leggings, her hair (now palest blonde) tied back out of the way. She carries a small bag with clothes, toiletries, and a little money, but no personal effects. After all, what would be the point of leaving behind her old life if she took any of it with her?

She pays for a room at a cheap hotel and goes straight to bed. Sasuke infiltrates her dreams, but it’s the boy she knew, not the man she married, who haunts her. A genin of twelve who is sullen, angry, sometimes smirking and superior. How she adores him with the purity of childish infatuation, a little girl so steeped in selfishness that she fails to see how much she’s standing in her own way.

The dream changes, and suddenly she’s alone with Naruto and Akiko in the delivery room, bringing her dead son into the world. Squeezing her best friend’s hand and wishing it was her husband’s while she cries and pushes.

Sakura wakes to a shadowed room, breathing heavily. She gets up, runs a bath, and while the hot water slowly fills the tub, she stands in front of the mirror and examines her naked body. Pale stretch marks still streak her stomach, few enough but incriminating. She summons her chakra to her fingertips, touches her belly, and carefully erases the silver scars that commemorate her short-lived motherhood.

.

.

They do not discover his wife to the north, south, east, or west. Each group of their search party returns to Konoha empty-handed—so the Hokage sends out new teams to look for her. He won’t give up on Sakura, Sasuke knows, because Naruto never gave up on him.

Three weeks after his wife’s desertion, he goes to the Yamanaka flower shop and buys white lilies. He leaves them at Ryudo’s grave, wordless, and returns home, where he packs a small bag. Sasuke takes only necessities and Sakura’s hitai-ate. She’ll want it back someday, he’s certain.

Then he reports to the Hokage’s office to file the official paperwork to be temporarily relieved of duty as a Konoha shinobi. Naruto doesn’t ask if he’s sure, doesn’t question his need to do this; his friend understands. Sasuke signs the appropriate pages, vaguely wondering how many times he’ll have to leave this village before he can stay.

“I’ll make sure somebody takes care of your house,” Naruto promises. “So that when you and Sakura-chan come back it’ll be waiting for you, good as new.”

Sasuke smiles, if weakly. “Thanks.”

He turns to leave, but at the door, he stops and says, “I’ll see you again. After I find her.”

“Then get going, asshole,” Naruto says, grinning. “Your wife is out there somewhere, waiting for you.”

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	6. Chapter 6

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August in Ame is hot and humid, the air so thick that breathing feels like suffocating, even as it rains (and it’s always raining here).

Sakura sits on the back steps of the orphanage, shielded from today’s storm by the awning overhead. The downpour floods the garden, despite every effort she took to protect it, beating down the glossy leaves and tender petals. Sakura watches one summer squall destroying three months’ labor, and she has to laugh. She’d encouraged the children to plant flowers—hardy blooms native to the area, ones that she thought would withstand even the heaviest rain. Sakura had hoped that this project would give her kids a sense of ownership, would foster hope that not everything fails before it can come to fruition. Maybe because that’s an idea she’s so desperate to believe herself.

She closes her eyes, and the rest of the world slips away. For the space of a heartbeat, all Sakura hears is the steady drumbeat of rain thumping against the small canopy above her, all she smells is the green scent of growing things and wet earth.

But moments like these, of quiet solitude, are rarer than diamonds in an Ame orphanage, so she isn’t surprised when Miyu calls for her.

“Setsu?” she asks.

Answering to her alias has become second nature, and Sakura doesn’t even hesitate. She stands, straightens her skirt, and hurries back inside. “Yes? Do you need me?”

Miyu throws up her hands. “I don’t know what to do with that boy. I leave him alone for two minutes—two minutes!—and he’s already started another fight.”

She doesn’t have to ask which child Miyu is talking about. It could only be Sojiro, the newest addition to their strange little house of the lost and left behind. A local genin delivered him to the orphanage last month, saying that he’d be thrown into the juvenile detention center if Miyu and Sakura refused to take him in. For a nine-year-old child, he’s remarkably destructive, and he’s managed to cause some kind of mayhem every day since his arrival.

Sojiro utterly ignores Miyu, curses the part-time caretakers, and fights the other children. He’s argumentative on his good days and aggressive on the bad, nasty to nearly everyone—everyone except for Sakura, really, and so her primary job for the last three weeks has been to keep an eye on him.

She finds Sojiro in the room he shares with two other boys, but since dinner is being served right now, his roommates are gone. He worries his split lip between his teeth, and it starts bleeding anew. A dribble of red slides down his chin, viscous and bright under the dim yellow lights.

Sakura points at his injured lip. “Do you mind if I fix that?”

Sojiro looks at her warily, pale eyes narrowed and mouth turned down in a frown. But he nods and says, “Okay. Sure.”

Sakura tries to be careful with her healing, only ever utilizing it within the walls of the orphanage, and she does her best to make her abilities appear average rather than exceptional. She lies about her origins to anyone who asks, claiming that as a young girl she’d moved from country to country and studied under a retired medic-nin for a time. Most people accept this story, but Sakura suspects that Miyu hasn’t bought a word of it.

Now she stands before Sojiro, holds her hand over his bruised and bloodied mouth, and summons chakra to the tips of her fingers. For a moment, the power of it surges through her, and Sakura tries to ignore the yearning she feels every time she performs even the simplest of medical ninjutsu. She misses the shinobi life often—always, lately—but most of all when she’s healing.

“There you go,” Sakura says, and she takes a full step back, giving Sojiro more space. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

He shakes his head, then bites his lip again and flinches. It shouldn’t be painful anymore, although the skin could be tender, the way recently mended flesh usually is. It takes Sakura a moment to realize that maybe Sojiro made that face because it _doesn’t_ hurt, and she worries that the whole point of his fights might be to harm himself.

She could ask him outright, but when faced with difficult questions, Sojiro is far more likely to shut down than open up. One wrong move could shatter the tenuous trust they’ve been building, and Sakura can’t afford to risk that.

Instead, Sakura takes a seat in the lone chair by the window and says, “You remind me of someone.”

Two someones, actually. Sojiro has all of Sasuke’s anger and sharp intelligence, but none of his drive, his focus. He lashes out wildly and causes chaos when he’s hurting, just like Naruto did as a little boy. Sakura sees pieces of her husband and her best friend in this child—in every orphan under this roof, if she’s honest.

For a moment, she’s lost, remembering sunny days as a new genin, before the world tore Team 7 apart and taught her the ugliness of life.

Thinking of Naruto makes her ache, makes her miss the Leaf and ramen lunches and the sound of his raucous laughter.

And then there’s Sasuke, the husband she can’t bear to think about, because the pain of separation only grows greater every day, every moment. Sakura has found something like peace here in this sad little corner of Ame—where she is needed, where the ghosts of her dead child and her broken marriage can’t haunt her so closely. But there is a difference in peace and fulfillment. The time is coming soon, she thinks, when it may no longer be best for her to hide here.

Sojiro draws his legs up to his chest and rests his head against his knees. He looks at her with wide eyes the color of ice and whispers, “You remind me of someone too.”

Sakura can guess, from the frailty of his voice and his trembling lower lip, that Sojiro means his mother.

He allows her to hug him, to pat his messy dark hair (much in need of a trim) and murmur soothing nonsense as he bites back quiet sobs.

They fit together too well: a son with no mother in the arms of a mother with no son.

.

.

Seven hundred forty-nine days: that’s how long it’s been since Sasuke last saw his wife.

He wonders if Sakura kept a count of their time apart when he was a missing-nin. Or when she lost their child. The son he didn’t have the chance to hold, who’s been ashes for far longer than he was alive—if you can consider a child who never took a breath to have been alive at all.

Sasuke pushes that thought away, because sometimes it hurts too much to remember all that he’s lost. Father, mother, brother, son, and wife. Gone forever, except for Sakura, and he’s determined to find her.

Not that he has any leads at the moment. Sasuke spent a week following up on a rumor that a skilled healer had taken up residence in a little River Country town. The healer in question was a retired medic-nin from Amegakure named Ikue. She let Sasuke sleep in her spare room and fed him three hot meals, and all she asked for in return was that he deliver a letter to her daughter in the Rain Village.

Ame is every bit as miserable and gloomy as Sasuke remembers it, a broken city dirtied by industrial grime. The marks of poverty permeate the whole village, from the abandoned factories to the scrawny alley cats.

Sasuke pulls his cloak around himself more tightly, though it does nothing to protect him from the storm. His clothes are soaked through, and he feels wet right down to his bones.

He finds a sad, threadbare inn in the northern quarter of the village, pays to stay for one night, and collapses on the bed without even undressing. Tomorrow he’ll wake to mud-splattered covers, his clothes damp and musty, but Sasuke can’t make himself care.

He’s just so tired. Worn thin from loneliness, hollowed out by fear. Even if he finds Sakura, he might not be able to convince her to come back home. She could be happier alone, far away from him.

But then Sasuke closes his eyes, and he remembers his wife in a hundred small moments: a little girl with her hair tied back by a red ribbon, her smile shy and cheeks pink; the security of her arms in the Forest of Death, anchoring him to the earth, bringing him back to himself when darkness threatened to swallow him whole; the taste of her rain-slicked skin the first time they went to bed together; how green her eyes were, bright and so happy, at their wedding.

Hope might be too much for Sasuke to muster, but he has faith in the bonds he forged with his team. And if he’s learned anything from Sakura, it’s that love endures, no matter how far it strays.

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.

From dawn to dusk, all she hears is “Setsu, come here!” and “Kai won’t stop pulling my hair, Setsu!” and “Can you help me with my homework, Setsu?”

Sometimes Sakura wonders whether she’d even respond to her true name, should anyone from her old life track her down here.

It’s a stupid dream. Two years have passed since she abandoned Konoha, and no one has discovered her yet. Either she’s hidden herself too well for her team to find her, or they’ve simply stopped looking.

She’d believe it of Kakashi; he’s so used to loss that his natural response is to bear it and keep going. Not Naruto, though, because it isn’t in his nature to let go of his friends. And Sasuke’s answer to betrayal has always been righteous fury—although the way he chooses to express it has changed dramatically since they were children. As a boy, he sought vengeance, ready to burn his life to the ground if he could only catch his enemies in the flames. As a man, he channeled that anger into protectiveness, using it keep his village and his loved ones safe.

Sakura wonders what he’ll say, if—no, _when_ —they see each other again. Because she can feel her days in Ame dwindling. Konoha pulls at her heart, insistent as a compass that always finds its way back to true north.

“Setsu! Kai scraped his knee. Can you fix it?”

Sakura swallows her homesickness, takes a deep breath, and gets back to work.

It’s a long, demanding day, like every other day at the orphanage. But that night, when Sakura climbs into bed, it’s with a light body and a calm mind. She’s doing important work here, and it’s been as good for her as it has for the children. Her homesickness can wait a little while longer. Konoha calls to her, but she isn’t ready to face the people (and the grave) she left behind. Not quite yet.

Sakura listens to the storm beating against her window, a wild melody played on fragile glass. It soothes her to sleep, into a dream of summer rain and kisses that taste of shochu.

“Setsu! Get up!”

She jerks awake, startled and short of breath. Only a split-second instinct keeps Sakura from throwing Miyu through a wall.

“What is it?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

Miyu runs a hand through her hair, gripping it like she’s on the verge of pulling it out.

“It’s Sojiro,” she says. “He’s missing.”

.

.

Ikue’s daughter is a pretty ginger-haired woman named Umeko. She lives in the better part of town—still a slum, but as nice as anyplace can be in a village like Ame.

When Sasuke hands over the message he owes her, she says, “Thank you.”

He nods. “It was no trouble.”

Umeko invites him to stay for tea. It’s the least she can do to express her gratitude, she says.

It’s a kind offer, but Sasuke has always been able to tell when someone wants more than they let on. Umeko isn’t disrespectful or offensively forward, but Sasuke recognizes her flirting for what it is, and he couldn’t be less interested.

He’s never wanted any woman but Sakura. Not even when he was young and terrified of the weakness love wrought.

“I can’t,” he says. “I have a long way to go.”

Umeko smiles, but disappointment shows so clear on her face that it looks almost like a frown. “Oh. All right then. I hope your travels go well.”

Sasuke wanders back to the street, into the downpour that never ends, as persistent as the green of Konoha’s forests.

He rounds a corner that veers toward Hagane Street, and as he steps onto the sidewalk, Sasuke feels it: the presence of someone’s chakra, sidling up behind him. It’s a child, he can tell without looking. A boy walking on impressively silent feet for a civilian, his hand reaching toward Sasuke’s pocket.

He turns at the last moment, catching the thief by his skinny wrist. Firm, but not hard, because Sasuke only means to warn the boy.

“It’s dangerous to steal from strangers,” he says. “Most Ame shinobi wouldn’t have dealt with you kindly.”

Sasuke releases the boy’s wrist. He steps backward, cuts his eyes left and right, undoubtedly looking for an escape route.

“Didn’t know you were a ninja.”

He scowls so fiercely that Sasuke is reminded oddly of himself at that age; it’s an uncanny feeling, one that he doesn’t quite like.

The kid’s mouth twists into a smirk when he asks, “How’s anybody supposed to guess that when you’re dressed like a hobo?”

Sasuke almost smiles in return. “People aren’t supposed to know I’m a ninja by looking at me. That’s part of what makes me good at my job.”

“Well thanks for not killing me, but I gotta go.”

It’s naive, but mostly sad, that he expects Sasuke to let him wander off into a village like this with no protection.

Sasuke waves at the street. “Go ahead then. Lead the way.”

The boy rolls his eyes, but when Sasuke asks his name, he says, “Sojiro.”

He does as he’s told for three whole minutes, and Sasuke considers it an accomplishment that Sojiro only tries to ditch him twice.

It doesn’t surprise him that Sojiro’s home is an orphanage. A child who lives under his family’s roof rarely resorts to pickpocketing.

Sasuke knocks on the front door, and within a few moments, it opens. A middle-aged woman with grey-streaked hair mutters some sort of prayer, then herds Sojiro inside.

“Thank you,” she says to Sasuke. “We’ve been looking for this one high and low since dawn.”

“Shouldn’t have bothered,” Sojiro says. “I’m just gonna run again, so you might as well let me go.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, but his mulish expression doesn’t quite ring true. It’s too strained, already breaking along fault lines.

This kid wants a home, Sasuke thinks. But he isn’t ready to believe good things can happen, too afraid to accept that he’s safe now.

It’s a feeling that’s too close to his own heart for Sasuke to be comfortable with, and he starts to say goodbye. There’s parting advice on the tip of his tongue, some piece of knowledge that he’d like to leave Sojiro with. He understands better than anyone that avoiding your fears never helps you escape them, and in the end, you’ll only run yourself in circles.

Exactly what he means to say, Sasuke loses the thread of it, because a woman rushes forward to check on Sojiro. She’s scolding him, but the tone of her voice is soft, full of affection, even if her words are strict.

A curtain of long white-gold hair shields her face from view, but it doesn’t matter, because Sasuke recognizes her right away. He’s memorized the grace of her gestures, learned every inch of her body. Even in foreign clothes, with blonde hair and her chakra suppressed, Sasuke couldn’t fail to know his wife at first sight.

A desperate sound catches in his throat, but it must be loud enough to grab Sakura’s attention. She stands up straight and whirls around to face him. Her eyes widen, and they’re green, so green, as pale and pure as in his memory, because Sasuke never forgets the nuances of color.

She’s stunning, somehow more lovely than the last time he saw her, and so beautifully, unexpectedly here. Seven hundred fifty days of fruitless searching, of scouring every hamlet, village, and city he could think of. And by some strange turn of fortune, a thieving orphan boy led Sasuke right to her.

Sakura turns away, head lowered. Long hair falls across her cheek, and Sasuke hates the common blonde that she chose to mask the pink he’s always loved. It’s pretty enough, he supposes, but it isn’t _Sakura_.

“Miyu,” she says. “Will you take Sojiro to the kitchen? He probably hasn’t eaten since last night.”

Miyu glances between the two of them, her gaze sharp and knowing. Sasuke thinks she’s probably clever enough to guess more of their situation than he’d like.

“Come on to the refectory, dear,” she says to Sojiro. “It’s past time you had dinner…”

Sojiro steals a glance at Sakura, then Sasuke, but he goes with Miyu quietly enough.

Then they’re alone. Sakura lingers around the open doorway, one hand grasping the frame, like she needs to hold onto something to stay on her feet.

“Do you want to come in?” she asks.

Sasuke realizes, with a mild lurch of embarrassment, that he’s been frozen on the stoop like an idiot, getting drenched by Ame’s relentless rain.

He steps inside, pulls the door shut behind him, and leans toward her on an impulse that he can’t suppress.

Sakura scrambles backward, keeping herself carefully out of arm’s reach. That might hurt if Sasuke didn’t notice the tremble in her step, the way her gaze has gone heavy-lidded and keen. But he does notice, because he never misses fine details, least of all those about Sakura.

She’s must be as shocked to see him as he is to see her. Nervous and perhaps afraid, but Sasuke learned long ago how to read yearning in the lines of her body, and he sees it now. Sakura _missed_ him. That’s enough to steal Sasuke’s voice, because he searched for his wife for two years, and he spent every day of that journey wondering whether any part of her wanted to be found.

He gives himself one more moment to drink in the sight of her, taking stock of the subtle changes that their time apart has brought to her face and figure. Sakura looks bright-eyed, with a healthy flush to her fair skin. Although her dress is modest, he can tell that her body is softer than before, a little fuller at her bust and hips. He’s certain that her strength is still formidable, even without resorting to chakra-enhanced blows, but there’s an unfamiliar, supple flair in the round of her shoulders and the curves of her calves. She’s been living like a civilian all this time, and it shows.

He hopes that she’s had a peaceful break from the shinobi life. That caring for injured children in this faraway place has given her a chance to heal from the loss of their son.

“Sakura, I—”

_I need you_ , Sasuke thinks. _I looked for you every day since you left._

He can’t bring himself to admit to these hard truths, not now. He never has had as much courage as Sakura when it comes to matters of the heart. The kind of bravery that might allow him to say _I love you_ when he doesn’t know that he’ll hear it back.

Sasuke swallows, takes an unsteady breath, and says, “It’s good to see you.”

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	7. Chapter 7

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He’s here. Sasuke is here, in Ame, dripping mud and rainwater onto the scuffed tile floor. He’s too thin, skinny in a way that’s brought a new sharpness to his jawline and cheekbones. His dark hair has grown longer than she’s ever seen it, and his clothes are travel-worn, threadbare. Sasuke is too handsome for words, same as always, but he doesn’t look well at all. There’s a gauntness to him now, far from the hale, powerful aura he exuded in Konoha.

It aches to look at him without touching, but Sakura knows better than to give in to that impulse.

“Is there somewhere private that we can talk?” Sasuke asks.

She can’t take him to her room because there’s already a familiar energy sparking between them. The desire to touch, to kiss, to hold, and if she invites him into the intimacy of her personal space she might do something that she’ll regret.

Sakura leads him upstairs to the library. It’s pitifully small despite her best efforts to fill out the orphanage’s selection of books. There simply isn’t enough money to spare for literature.

They don’t turn on the lights. The storm outside dims the evening sunshine, and it casts a twilight pall over the room. Gloomy, claustrophobic, so heated despite the chill that Sakura can barely breathe. But it’s better to face him in the dark, where the shadows can help her hide.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura says.

It’s a relieving pain, to apologize, like lancing a wound. Cutting herself to let out the bad blood.

“I know it wasn’t fair to you, to leave like I did. But if I’d said goodbye, you would’ve stopped me.”

“If you could be that easily swayed, maybe you shouldn’t have left,” Sasuke says.

He doesn’t sound angry or bitter, the way Sakura had expected him to when they met again. All she hears in Sasuke’s voice is exhaustion, the same kind of weariness that weathered her right down to nothing.

“I had to.” Sakura shrinks back against the shelf behind her, until she can feel the spines of hardbound books digging into her shoulders. “If I’d stayed, we would have torn each other apart.”

Sasuke takes a deep breath, then asks, “Don’t you think that should have been my choice too?”

“Why? So we’d be in Konoha right now, fighting through the days and...”

Sasuke finishes the thought for her: “And making love through the nights?”

She can’t look at him, not now, but it’s a mistake to put up her guard. No sooner than she glances away, Sasuke has moved into her space, one hand braced over her head, the other fiddling with a lock of her hair.

“You can let the jutsu go,” he whispers. “It’s just me.”

Sakura knows better—truly, she does—but this is Sasuke, and he’s seen all of her, possessed her heart and her body for so long that sometimes they barely felt like her own. In the face of all that, what harm could it do to let a simple jutsu falter?

When her hair blushes back to its natural pink, Sasuke’s mouth twitches into that almost-smile she loves so much.

“You really let it grow out,” he says, still holding that lock of hair between his fingers. “I thought that was part of the jutsu.”

She wishes he’d let go of her; she wishes he’d touch her everywhere.

“Well, there’s no reason for me to keep it short anymore.”

Sakura wants to ask if he likes it, if he still finds her beautiful in her drab clothes with her softer, civilian body. She only ducks her head, thankful for the darkness. Her cheeks are so warm that they must be as red as that stupid bow she used to wear.

Sasuke takes hold of her chin and makes her look at him. “Are you happy here?”

Sakura can’t find the breath to answer at first. It’s been such a long time since they touched, and now he’s handling her so easily, like there’s no doubt that he still has a claim to her body.

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve found some peace of mind. I’m needed here, useful, and it’s important work.”

She can see Sasuke itching to scowl, but he doesn’t, not quite, when he says, “Konoha needs you too.”

Sakura nods. “I know. But staying there was ruining me.”

Sasuke lets go of her, his expression shuttered. His face betrays nothing, but Sakura can read him from head to toe. When his shoulders go rigid it means he’s angry. Only pain makes him swallow in this particular way, and his step backward is the slightest bit unsteady because he’s afraid.

“I needed space,” Sakura says, her voice quiet, gentle. “Time to myself to heal.”

That cold mask cracks a little, his eyes shining overbright in the darkness. “Time away from me, you mean.”

“Time away from everything,” Sakura says. “There was so much in Konoha that I couldn’t bear to face. You must understand.”

Sasuke goes to the window and places his hand on the glass, his strong body framed by the wan light of this ever-storming world.

“I do, Sakura, but can you honestly tell me that your grief didn’t follow you here?”

She approaches slowly, her footsteps light with the skill of a kunoichi stalking a target. Sasuke isn’t her prey, but he’s skittish and easily lost, same as her these days. Sakura takes her place by his side, leaving only a narrow space between them.

“Of course it did,” she says. “Losing our son, that’s something I’ll have to carry with me forever. But being here… it’s helped me learn how to do that.”

“Then I’m glad for you,” Sasuke says carefully, evenly.

Sakura turns, looking up at him. “You don’t sound glad.”

He faces her, and the heat in his gaze is enough to make her tremble. “You left me, Sakura. Maybe you needed space to heal, but I needed _you_.”

Sasuke pulls away, then turns, heading for the door.

“Wait!”

Sakura barely stops herself from rushing after him, from saying, _I love you_ and _I miss you_ and _please don’t leave_.

Her husband looks over his shoulder at her and says, “I’m only going outside to get some air. I’ll be back soon.”

It isn’t a question, which is just as well. Sakura doesn’t have the strength to send him away, or to run again, and now they both know it.

.

.

Sasuke almost makes it to the front door when Sojiro stops him.

“How do you know Setsu?” he asks, skinny arms crossed over his chest.

Setsu. It’s a fine enough name, he supposes, if entirely wrong for Sakura, as false as that blonde hair she’s been hiding behind.

“We’re from the same village,” Sasuke says.

He means to leave it at that, but when he walks around Sojiro, the little boy follows him to the front steps. The rain has let up, no more than a drizzle now, so Sasuke doesn’t send him back inside. Sojiro stands next to him, hands in his pockets, looking out on the grimy street, all rust and pipes and wires. This whole village is a study in industrial decay, no place for a child to grow up.

“You lied,” Sojiro says. “Setsu isn’t from any village. She grew up all over the place.”

Sasuke itches to tell this boy that _Setsu_ is the liar, but instead he shrugs. “I don’t owe you the truth. You asked a nosy question.”

Sojiro seems like a prickly child, and Sasuke expects him to throw a tantrum at that, but he only laughs.

“You’re rude,” he says brightly, as if that’s a compliment. “I like you.”

“You like me because I’m rude?” Sasuke asks.

Sojiro toes at the wet concrete, shrugging. “Everyone tries to make me be nice. Maybe I don’t wanna be nice.”

Sasuke thinks of himself at Sojiro’s age—ten, maybe, if he’s generous—a sullen child, angry at the world, harboring so much hate that it was eating him alive. Behaving nicely had been beyond him, near the bottom of his list of concerns.

“I don’t want to be nice either,” Sasuke admits. “I try, though. When it matters.”

Sojiro nods, his expression grave, like Sasuke just imparted some great wisdom.

“We should go inside. Setsu and Miyu don’t like it when I stand in the rain,” Sojiro says.

Sasuke gestures toward the door behind them. “Go on then.”

Sojiro makes a sour expression that could have come straight from Naruto’s face, then leaves. The door doesn’t close quite quickly enough for Sasuke to miss Sojiro calling him a bastard. He smiles without meaning to. That kid can’t be more than sixty pounds soaking wet, but every ounce of him is trouble.

Sasuke sits on the steps, puts his elbows on his knees, and clasps his hands, fingers laced together.

He’s found Sakura. A Sakura who still wants him, who shouted _Wait!_ when she thought he might run away. A Sakura who’s built a new life for herself, one far from home. It’s selfish to disrupt the peace she’s found, to begrudge her needing this more than she needs him.

Sasuke knows he should feel bad about that, but the truth is uglier and simpler than guilt. He’ll take anything Sakura will offer him, give her whatever she wants, and do what needs to be done to bring her back to Konoha. He doesn’t care how selfish that is if it means he can hold his wife at the end of the day.

.

.

Sakura stays in the library for a long while, waiting for Sasuke to come back. She has a good view of him from the window, sitting on the front steps, his clothes getting slowly drenched. The sun sets, and then it’s too dark to see him anymore. Still, she can feel his chakra, warm and vibrant.

She sits on the floor, back against the wall, and wraps her arms around her knees. She’s missed him, even more than she realized until this moment. It took seeing his face, hearing his voice, feeling the intoxicating warmth of his touch to remember the full extent of what she gave up when she left Konoha.

Sakura wakes to strong arms holding her and the scent of rain-soaked Sasuke. She didn’t even know she’d fallen asleep, and now her husband is carrying her down the hall bridal style.

Sakura stirs, shakes her head. “Sasuke-kun...”

_Let go. Put me down._ These are the things she should say, but Sakura could more easily order the sun to rise in the west than make any such demands.

When she blinks, she finds that the lights in the hallway are off, the orphanage hushed. It’s only ever this quiet in the middle of the night, and Sakura makes a small, embarrassed noise when she realizes how long she must have been asleep on the floor.

“Miyu said this was your room,” Sasuke whispers.

He sets her on her feet then, and Sakura grabs his shoulders to steady herself. He’s every bit as broad under her hands as she remembers, and for a wild, foolish moment Sakura considers inviting him into her room—but if she does, he’ll end up in her bed too.

Sasuke froze when she touched him, and his dark eyes are fixed on her with such purpose that she has to look away. He wants to kiss her, Sakura thinks, almost as badly as she wants to be kissed.

“Where are you staying?” she asks, just to fill the space between them with something innocuous.

Sasuke takes a deep breath, his first in some moments, then says, “Just an inn on Hoshi Street. Nowhere special.”

Sakura takes her hands off of him. “You should probably get going. That’s all the way on the north end of the village, and it’s late.”

“Are you telling me to leave?” Sasuke asks, his words soft but painfully neutral. “Or trying to find out if I’ll stay?”

Sakura turns around and touches her bedroom door, fingers splayed across the fake wood. She can’t face him for this.

“I don’t want you to go,” she says, quiet as a secret. “There’s so much unfinished between us, and I can’t stand to leave it that way. But if you stay here with me tonight, then I—I don’t know if I can—”

Sasuke grabs her around the waist and pulls her against him, pressing her back to his chest, and that’s all it takes, one rough touch to make her quiver all over.

It’s embarrassing, how easily he makes a mess of her.

“It’s been so long,” she murmurs. An explanation for her weakness, maybe an apology too.

“How long?” Sasuke asks, and his voice is anything but soft or neutral now. “How long since you’ve—?”

“Two years,” Sakura says, right away, so he won’t have to question her fidelity for one more second. She leans back against him, savoring the steadiness of his body, a whimper caught in her throat. “Did you really think I’d go to bed with another man?”

Sasuke’s breath is warm against her ear when he says, “I had no way to know if you were ever planning to come back.”

“I hoped to, someday, but even if I’d spent the rest of my life right here, I never would’ve turned to anyone else.” Sakura closes her eyes, finding a deeper darkness within the night. It takes all of her courage to ask, “Did you?”

“You’re my wife,” Sasuke says, and his grip on her tightens, possessive and protective at once. “Of course not.”

Sakura bites her lip, but it doesn’t hold back her sob. Sasuke is still hers, same as she’s still his, and it’s more than she could have asked for. They stay this way, bodies pressed close like the lovers they were, and might still be again, until her tears run dry.

Then she asks, “Where do we go from here?”

Sasuke loosens his hold on her, but his hand settles on her stomach, tenderly cupping the place where she once carried their child. “I don’t know, but I want to find out.”

Sakura covers his hand with her own and says, “Me too.”

.

.


End file.
